About 49 acres of a maize farm at Kambali in the Wa East District of the Upper West Region belonging to Mr. Bernard Ambataayela Mornah, former Chairperson of the People's National Convention (PNC) has been raised down to ashes by an inferno.
A total of over 174 acres of land was cultivated with crops such as maize, soya beans, millet, yams, some beehives, and about 2 acres of cashew plantation.
The fire, which ravaged the maize farm Wednesday afternoon, January 5, 2022, left about 49 acres of the maize farm comprising a barn full of tubers of yams, two acres of cashew plantations, and some beehives completely burnt down.
The Ghana National Fire Service who took a considerable length of time to reach the scene due to the unmotorable nature of the road responding to a distress call, managed to douse the maize farm to avoid its further escalation to other parts of the farm.
"I don't know what happened all I know is that I was called that our farm was on fire. Immediately, what came to mind was to call the Ghana National Fire Service (GNFS) and they dispatched their vehicle whilst I was in Sankana, my vehicle was in Wa. My vehicle came to pick me in Sankana. We still came from Sankana and passed the Fire Service (fire tender) for obvious reasons- the road was not motorable, even the main road, not talk of the farm road. So it took a long time for the Fire Service to get here. By the time they got to the farm, the first phase of our maize farm was entirely gone," Mr. Bernard Mornah recounted.
He indicated that the fire officers however did well to stall the raging inferno at both the first and third phase of the maize farm from spreading to the rest of the farm to avert further destruction.
The outspoken politician meanwhile revealed his suspicion of foul play as to what might have triggered the fire at the farm.
He wondered how the fire could have leapfrogged from one part of the farm to destroy barns of yams stored on the farm without continuous burning of the fire to reach where the yams were being stored as the natural occurrence as far as the spread of an inferno should be.
"Even the yam that we planted, the fire jumped...they (the farmers) put the yams in the barn, the fire came to attack the yam and so it was burnt. And you could see if you look at the trend, as the fire was here, and our workers started concentrating here, suddenly, the fire was at the top here.
There was no continuation whatsoever (of the fire) that you can say there's a bush from here to that end. So they were containing the fire to this side. So what took the fire to that other end so it started burning so as to go into phase 3 of our maize?...me, I think it's well-calibrated. If that's to down spirit us, we are stronger than that," he warned.
Fire officers who were at the scene to douse the fire indicated they had a hectic time reaching the scene to fight the inferno due to the poor nature of the road leading to the farm.
As to the cause of the fire, they explained they were still evaluating the incident to ascertain the cause of the fire.
